The press release is corporate bull**t for saying that the dealers were not providing any value, which has been kind of obvious from Day 1. They rarely do – e.g. Air Touring delivered negligible value for the 15% they made on Socata TB sales. They wasted resources on fighting wars with Socata. Their tech expertise was poor – they delivered my plane with a defunct RMI (which was wrongly wired and they presumably thought I would not notice) and when some years later they went bust and I got a wad of papers sent to me by the administrator, it confirmed that their top avionics people (CAA L2 approved) could not even wire up a KI229 and had to get advice from Socata.
The last sentence is bad news for Europe… nothing will change here.
I always wondered why aircraft manufacturers have dealers. It’s not a scene like cars, where people walk around the showroom and sit in different models. Most aircraft buyers are smart enough (or maybe not?) to do their research, visit some shows, and a plane has wings and can fly. Also the choice is hardly wide. One base in the middle of Europe, near a big airline airport, would do.
If Cessna reckon this works in the USA which is a really big place, it would work here even better.
I do wonder what an [factory new] aircraft broker does for the manufacture (or new Mercedes garage for the same reason). I suspect, they exist because of tradition rather than current logic.
If a new Piper/Cirrus/PC12 costs between $500,000 and $5,000,000 – and the broker gets 7%, that’s $35,000 to $350,000 to answer the phone. I would much prefer to buy directly from the manufacture and receive a discount for the same amount. Besides, I have found some of the main dealers disappointingly arrogant and useless.
Perhaps this would be a step to making new GA just a few percentage points more affordable?
PF
A lot of the people I have brokered aircraft for would not notice the proceeds of the sale in their bank account. They don’t want to deal with anybody that might remotely give them grief. They have a “man” to do everything. That includes selling their aircraft. I can think of one guy that sprayed a bottle of champagne at a beach party that cost more than the value of his SEP aircraft. Don’t try and apply too much logic to these things 
William,
I fully understand the role a broker plays in selling a used aircraft as it’s complex, not a commodity and the price is not binary.
But for a commodity with a binary price, why can’t I just use my Amex/Visa to pay a deposit for a new plane like a Tesla. They are all the same and the sales guys input is irrelevant.
I would ask manufacturers to sell to us directly (cheaper) as your brokers are like gasoline engines, end of an era…
PF
pistonfever wrote:
William,
I fully understand the role a broker plays in selling a used aircraft as it’s complex, not a commodity and the price is not binary.But for a commodity with a binary price, why can’t I just use my Amex/Visa to pay a deposit for a new plane like a Tesla. They are all the same and the sales guys input is irrelevant.
I would ask manufacturers to sell to us directly (cheaper) as your brokers are like gasoline engines, end of an era…
PF
Yes – In the context of new aircraft I think that the manufacturers could do it all in house. However, the franchise dealers add liquidity to new aircraft sales. Take Oriens selling the PC12, they have a demo aircraft and a commitment to take x per year. They have better local information on who the likely buyers are, more local knowledge and that is what sells aircraft for them. Pilatus in Stans are unlikely to know who is getting fed up with their old piston twin, and is ready to move on up.
Like a good franchise motor dealer in a town, he will be a member of the golf club/horse racing/sailing set and know all that is going down. If you apply the logic it’s a commodity I guess he would just sit in the showroom all the time and wait for people to come to him. I knew a Land Rover dealer who had his R44 parked outside the showroom and everyone who closed a deal on a new Range Rover got a flight to a 5-star hotel for lunch. It’s a commodity for sure but his input was very relevant.
As an aircraft owner since 2002, what I think is especially bad is having to buy parts via distributors. They add zero value, merely buying the items back to back so you just wait longer, and the parts are some 25% more expensive.
Socata sell direct in Australia and/or New Zealand, since the distributor down there went bust. So they are the lucky lot
Socata could ship next-day by DHL etc within Europe. A massive improvement in the service.
I’d say it depends on the seller first and the buyer second.
Looking at quite a few adds on Planecheck and other places there are lots of people who are totally clueless about selling anything, let alone airplanes. Smeared pictures if any, no panel pics, minimal text missing any useful figure e.t.c, those people can really do with a good broker who takes the burden of putting the information together and publish it away from them.
A good broker will basically do everything to sell the plane, from document handling to advertizing to dealing with inquiries which includes separating time wasters from serious contenders and so on. Lots of people can’t be bothered with this or are so timed out that even a phonecall requesting information would be too much.
For a buyer, a broker can be very useful particularly if it is first time buyers who don’t know much about how to transfer titles, what to buy and so on. Clearly, a good broker in this context will have his client in mind and not simply want to sell and be damned.
Obviously there are the good, the bad and the ugly. I have known several good ones and some which I would not have used myself, the way I know all the latter are now out of business.In recent years I have not worked with any. But there are some which have been there for a very long time such as Klaus Kühl in Germany or Jimmy Garrison in Texas (prime address for Mooneys in the US) are two which come to mind or Alex Pichler in Austria whom I’ve known for some years.
Clearly most people here won’t need brokers to sell their airplanes even though for some who in principle are savvy enough to do it themselfs it can be helpful to enlist a broker if there are time constraints or other reasons. The reputation of a broker may well help the sale of a plane as well.
